Thomas Micchelli

Thomas Micchelli is an artist, writer and co-editor of Hyperallergic Weekend. His paintings and drawings have recently been exhibited at Outlet, Life on Mars, Centotto, Norte Maar, Schema Projects and Studio 10, all in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and his essays and reviews have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Art 21, Bookforum.com and NY Arts.

In 2003, Daisy Youngblood collected her MacArthur prize and decamped to Costa Rica. The sculptures in her current solo at McKee Gallery, Daisy Youngblood: Ten Years 2006-2015, covers the work she’s done since, a ménage of animals and humans, clay and hair, rocks and sticks, where the mythic is extracted from the dregs of the earth.

Ten years ago, the Morgan Library & Museum decided it was time to bring its collection up to speed on the art of drawing in the 20th and 21st centuries — a daunting task in itself, and even more improbable in the face of a superheated, late-capitalist art market: at the feast of the trophy-eaters, would the museum be forced to content itself with scraps?

A few months after having been roundly trounced for The Forever Now: Painting in an Atemporal World, its attempt to assess the current state of painting, the Museum of Modern Art opened a reinstallation of its contemporary collection on the same day as its Björk fiasco.

Optical painting has been making its presence felt lately, with its 21st-century manifestation swapping the psychedelia and illusionism of its Sixties progenitor, Op Art, for an emphasis on process, systems and formal interrogation.

There are nine lumps of plaster and Hydrocal — covered in yellowing shellac and polished wax — on display at CANADA on the Lower East Side, their domed tops roughly the size and shape of a human skull (hence the title of the exhibition, Crania).